WRONG ABOUT JAPAN, BY PETER CAREY

Recommended and lent to me by one of my classmates, this book is about the novelist Peter Carey and his son’s fascination with manga and anime, how it leads them to Japan, and how their trip sets aside some preconceptions they had about the culture. The book cerainly has its interesting moments, like the fact that the first giant robot manga actually predates Hiroshima. But mostly it just documents the author’s mildly slack-jawed awe at his own ignorance about a culture he’s encountered only though a mere fraction of its pop culture. He seems very uncritical in all his encounters, and all too willing to end his inquiries by writing off Japan as simple incomprehensible to an outsider.